Welcome to the International Skeptics Forum, where we discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly but lively way. You are currently viewing the forum as a guest, which means you are missing out on discussing matters that are of interest to you. Please consider
registering so you can gain full use of the forum features and interact with other Members. Registration is simple, fast and free! Click here to register today.

The last combat between Shermans and PZ IV's that I know of happened in 1973, when the Israeli Super Shermans met some modernized Syrian PZ IV in the fighting on the Golan Heights.
The last Shermans to be on active service were probably those in Chile. As the Israelis phased out the Super Sherman in the 70's they sold them to Chile, where they remained on active service until replace by Leopard Ones in 1999.

A bunch of them ended up in Lebanon when Israel armed some of the 'friendly' militias. They were the M-51 105mm gun versions.

Besides, if you're seriously comparing it to the '45 Centurion, that one only had 38mm armour on the sides... So, really, WTH is your point? That at around the same weight (but not really: the Centurion was about 20% heavier) the Centurion actually had weaker sides? How the heck is that supposed to be disparraging for the Panther?

The point is that everyone (well OK, not everyone, but lots of people, mostly people who read some comics and/or play WT or WoT) is like OMG TEH PANTHER BEST TANK EVAR, 100 SHERMANS TO KILL 1 PANTHER!!!ELEVEN!1!!TWO!! meanwhile it wasn't that formidable and in many respects was a deeply flawed design

Well, sure, no tank ever was anything but a compromise. Some compromises were better than others for a given point in time, but all had to sacrifice something to get something else. Be it mobility or reliability or cost or just the fact that getting something good enough out the door now beats getting something great out the door next year.

Basically, sure, there is no perfect tank, just like there is no perfect sword.

But I don't think the way to counter some people's ignorant BS is with equal and opposite BS. It's not newtonian mechanics. They don't cancel out. It just doubles the amount of BS stinking up the place

Besides, the "problems" were common in other tanks at the time too. You know, if we're to compare them to something more sane than a '45 design.

E.g., the Sherman had the exact same shot trap problem. Hell, so did the Russian tanks. E.g., the IS-2 did the same, while the T-34 -- for which probably more people have a hard-on than the Panther -- only has the saving grace that it guided the shot into the turret ring instead. Or if we're talking about British tanks, those hexagonal turrets on the Crusader III were even better at deflecting shots into the hull roof. Etc.

Not many other people had figured out that problem... partially also because it wasn't actually much of a problem. The number of tanks of any nation that actually were lost to such deflected shots, as opposed to the shot just cratering into the sloped armour anyway, was homeopathic. It just wasn't a high priority to redesign your turret for that.

Getting shot by a 45mm gun from the side, yeah, that was a big problem and almost caused a Panther 2 to come into existence. Getting shot in the roof by a deflected shot, not so much.

So, yeah, hind-sight is 20-20, but focusing on just one model as having that problem is like complaining that that rooster over there doesn't lay eggs... unlike the other roosters which also don't lay eggs.

E.g., the side armour wasn't a very high priority for most people. Given that, you know, you can put the same weight somewhere else. And the sides have more surface than the glacis or mantlet, so adding another inch on the sides is adding much more weight than another inch on the front.

As I was saying even in '45, it didn't seem worth it for the Brits to put more than 38mm on the side. But if we look at tanks that existed at the same time as the Panther, the Sherman only had 30mm on the side, or only 75% of the thickness on the Panther. Even th T-34, again for which more people have a hard-on, was also 40mm on the upper part of the side hull, just like the Panther, though it increased to 45mm on the lower hull.

The only ones that actually were significantly more protected from the side were the heavy tanks like the Churchill, but in the Brits' case that came at the expense of being infantry tanks. I.e., moving at a walking speed. Which wasn't the kind of compromise the rest of the world was looking for.

So again, if we're going to disparage the Panther for it... as opposed to WHAT? Seems to me again like the case of the one rooster that doesn't lay eggs.

Well, sure, no tank ever was anything but a compromise. Some compromises were better than others for a given point in time, but all had to sacrifice something to get something else. Be it mobility or reliability or cost or just the fact that getting something good enough out the door now beats getting something great out the door next year.

Basically, sure, there is no perfect tank, just like there is no perfect sword.

But I don't think the way to counter some people's ignorant BS is with equal and opposite BS. It's not newtonian mechanics. They don't cancel out. It just doubles the amount of BS stinking up the place

Indeed, every tank is a compromise and some indeed are better than others.
Like concentrating all your armor at the front and keeping the sides thinner. Worked reasonably well for the Panthers when they had their side skirts added (modern tanks have the same basic idea).

Where the Panther was deeply flawed was in the optics. And this was an area where the Germans really could have done better.
The gunner had a very good optic viewer. Very good for keeping a target in your sights and servicing it, until it is destroyed.
What the gunner didn't have was a unity sight (basically a periscope which doesn't magnify), so it was very difficult for the gunner to find a target in his sight. He was depending on the tank commander to find a target and to talk him into turning the turret until he could see the target as well in his gunsight. When that did happen it was alright, but the process was needlessly long in duration. (try finding a small target a km away while only looking through a telescope and find out how 'easy' it is).

This as opposed to the Sherman (and almost any other mid to late war tank), where the gunner had two sights. One unity sight on the turret roof to search for targets. In that sight was a small circle. Anything in that circle would be visible in the gunner sight. The gunner sight was right next to the gun.
The Sherman gunner just had to keep the target in his unity sight fixed. All the while with the turret almost beneath some kind of cover (a ridge or something). When driving the tank forward, the gunner just had to look into his gunner sight until the target automatically appeared. That meant the gun was clear of the cover and he could fire immediately.

This was simply not possible with the Panther tank and that was inexcusable!

The Soviets found out that a Panther tank, which was moving was absolutely harmless and could be engaged at will. The Panther only turned dangerous when it stopped and stayed stopped.
That is the hallmark of a deeply flawed design. Even though other parts of its design were very, very good.

__________________Bow before your king
Member of the "Zombie Misheard Lyrics Support Group"

The single most important factor in tank to tank combat was which side saw which side first and could thus fire first?

The American found that in Europe, defenders fired first 84% of the time. When they did so, the attackers suffered 4,3 times as many losses as the defenders. If the attackers fired first though, the defenders suffered 3.6 times as many losses as the attackers.
The British found something similar. In 70% of the 83 actions studied the side that fired first won the engagement.
(Armored Thunderbolt, S Zalago, page 230 and 231)

__________________Bow before your king
Member of the "Zombie Misheard Lyrics Support Group"

Although it did have a 28 degree field of view, which is clearly less than the 100 degree FOV on a Sherman unity scope, but I'm probably not very qualified to judge exactly how hard it is to find a target at long range using that field of view. When you're trying to find a target at 1km away, is it better to not have any magnification than to have 2.5x magnification? Heck if I know. I'll take your word for it.

And if we're talking "what were they smoking?" kind of designs, it's interesting to note that what they considered a bigger problem to solve was that they thought they didn't have ENOUGH magnification. By the end of 1943, as in, late november / early december 1943, they introduced the Turmzielfernrohr 12A (a.k.a. TZF 12A), which offered the option to double the magnification to 5x and reduce the field of view to 14 degrees.

So, you know, rather than think they needed a scope with less magnification, they wanted one with more. Go figure.

Just for the record, they seemed to be aware all along about the importance of shooting first. The gunner had the authority to shoot without asking the tank commander if he spotted something first, and the tank commander was supposed to give the order to shoot first and only then inform the rest of the platoon. At least according to the contemporary manuals, anyway. Panther crews were also instructed to not hesitate to engage Shermans up to 2km away, and not wait for the optimal distance which was about half that.

Which does tend to indicate that you could at least sometimes spot something through the gunner optics. Why didn't they give the guy MORE field of view, then, well, your guess is as good as mine. Probably better than mine if you're sober

About being harmless while moving, though... again, as opposed to what? The only tanks that had any gun stabilization during WW2 were American. And even that one was stabilization in only one axis, as opposed to the post-war 2-axis stabilization. The Russian tanks most definitely had no stabilization at all, and worse optics, so they sucked even more at firing on the move.

So basically I could understand the Americans looking down on the Panthers for being not much of a threat on the move, but the Russians? Hardly seems like they should be the one to call the kettle black, is all I'm saying.

Pretty sure it was possible to keep tracking the target with the Panther too, if you happened to spot it with the gunner scope. I mean, it was still the gunner that had the pedal to traverse the turret. So probably I'm missing what you guys are trying to tell me.

The gunners periscope in the Sherman had a binocular wide field of view so the gunner had a better tactical awareness and could pick up targets on the move as they would stay in his field of view as the tank moved over uneven or rough ground. In a narrow field telescope it was harder to acquire a target and a lot harder to keep the gun more or less on the target as you moved.

Panther: Poor field of view optics for the gunner, not-so-hot side armor, imbalanced gun, multiple issues with the engine, turret traverse, and transmission. Final drive was a joke that would only last around 150km. Bad enough but then the tank would nearly need to be dissassmbled to replace it. Mediocre escape options. Mediocre HE rounds.
T-34 Two man turret issue (commander gets overworked - don't underestimate how critical this is),issue mostly resolved with the T-34-85). Cramped, uncomfortable for the crew, well designed but not always well built (Soviets determined a tank was only likely to survive 6 months at most so they didn't bother stepping up the quality builds of some). parts). Poor escapability.

M4 Sherman - High profile for a medium tank, not great on muddier surfaces even with modifications, slower compared to other medium tanks. 75mm was not the best Anti-Tank round, while the Firefly and 76mm versions had poor HE rounds and excessively long barrels. Slower compared to other medium tanks designs. Early versions had design flaws such as no escape hatch for the loader and no viewing cupola for the commander.

Not always well built is putting it mildly for the T-34. For the one at Bovington for example, you can actually insert a finger between two plates that are supposed to be welded together. Basically it only had to be good enough to be rolled out.

Also, just to not crap on the Panther only, prior to the T-34-85, the T-34 had pretty bad optics compared to German tanks. And not just in lacking the milli-radian sights. They also lacked the lens coatings. The light transmission for Soviet optics was only 39.2% for the 2.5x telescope sight and only of 26.3% for the 2.5x periscope dial sight. They didn't produce a particularly clear image either.

Even after the T-34-85, while the quality of the optics did go up, according to the Finnish report on them, the markings on the gun sight were only an improvement for targets up to 1000m away. Which really, is a waste of the 85mm gun's potential.

Even after the T-34-85, yes, the gunner had a separate periscope, but unlike the Sherman, it wasn't linked to the gun in any way. So even if you saw a target via the gunner periscope, then you had to go and find it again in the gunner scope. So just having a periscope doesn't put you on par with the Sherman optics. The time to then align the gun sights was a massive disadvantage in the T-34-85 compared to the Sherman.

And luckily we have a nifty comparison there too, because the two faced each other in Korea. American medium tanks against T-34-85, the Americans fired first in almost 60% of the cases, or higher for the M26.

Etc.

But generally, the problem I see with such lists compiled by people is that they fail to compare the tanks to each other. It's what some guy perceived as could-have-been-better on one tank, vs what someone else perceived as a flaw on some other tank, but there's no comparison to see exactly how big a flaw IS it compared to the other tanks. You know, to make such a comparison of flaws meaningful at all.

E.g., again, for the side armour, I see the 40mm side armour listed as a flaw for the Panther, but the 30mm side armour on the Sherman doesn't make the list?

I mention the side armor thing because the Panther is such a heavy "medium" tank, and far too many wehraboos have declared it impenetrable from almost all sides. Also the fact that there were so few Panthers compared to Shermans and T-34s that sooner or later it will have a tank at its side.

That said, I think anyone who thinks any medium tank ever (or really ANY tank, period) was impenetrable from all sides should just be sent to a good psychiatrist, rather than served a counter-exaggeration. I mean even for heavy tanks -- and I'll use non-German tanks, to step away from that battle of exaggerations -- if you look at side or rear armour, compared to the guns of contemporary tanks, it clearly is nowhere near impenetrable.

E.g., the very heavy Churchill, and mind you, it's a good tank so I'm not maligning it, the front armour was 152mm (6 inch) but the side armour was 102mm (4 inch) by the time of the Mark VII in 1943. Thing is, by that time the 7.5cm KwK 40 gun on a Pz.IV Ausf G (which had been in production since 1942) could just about penetrate more than 102mm even at 1500m with the APCR ammo, and at 1000m with the APCBC ammo.

Does that make the Churchill a bad tank? Of course not. But it just shows that even the best heavies weren't impenetrable from the sides. And mediums were never supposed to be anywhere NEAR impenetrable from all sides.

The side armour on a medium is there more to protect against glancing shots when you're still mostly facing the enemy, than to stop an AT gun shooting perpendicular to it.

M4 Sherman - High profile for a medium tank, not great on muddier surfaces even with modifications, slower compared to other medium tanks. 75mm was not the best Anti-Tank round, while the Firefly and 76mm versions had poor HE rounds and excessively long barrels. Slower compared to other medium tanks designs. Early versions had design flaws such as no escape hatch for the loader and no viewing cupola for the commander.

I remember reading once that the Sherman tank used to catch fire. That must have been alarming for the tank crews:

Best Answer: Because they tended to explode and burn when hit. The Sherman was no match for the Panthers and even the later Panzer IV's, and obviously they were cannon fodder for the mighty Tigers. Fortunately there weren't that many Tigers deployed and the Panthers could be flanked (however it usually took several Shermans to take out a single Panther.

I remember reading once that the Sherman tank used to catch fire. That must have been alarming for the tank crews:

Utter nonsense from the History Channel crap "documentaries". The Sherman never had never had any propensity for catching fore more than any other tank of the era. To elaborate:

1) Most tanks, when penetrated, tended to catch fire. This is usually the ammo propellant going off. The Sherman actually reduced this a lot by using a wet ammo storage system. The Sherman's crew survuval rate was actually quite high.

2) While the early life in British service may have had a higher-than-average burn rate on penetration this was likely due to the British putting shells everywhere they could fit.

3) By comparison, the Panther tank was known to even catch fire just from being unloaded from a train flatbed. This was due to its faulty, leaky gas lines combined with a sealed compartment for an underwater ability the Panther never had or used.

4) The guy who wrote that answer on yahoo needs to look at the actual facts, starting by looking at the battle of Arracorte, where mutliple mighty Panthers were torn to shreds by Shermans and Tank Destroyers. It didn't take multiple Shermans to beat a Panther, but the US sent Shermans in groups of 5 to any threat. The Panzer 4 was not that much of a threat either.

5) The vast majority of Shermans were lost to Pazerfauts hits, the Stug3, and mines.

That said, I think anyone who thinks any medium tank ever (or really ANY tank, period) was impenetrable from all sides should just be sent to a good psychiatrist, rather than served a counter-exaggeration. I mean even for heavy tanks -- and I'll use non-German tanks, to step away from that battle of exaggerations -- if you look at side or rear armour, compared to the guns of contemporary tanks, it clearly is nowhere near impenetrable.

E.g., the very heavy Churchill, and mind you, it's a good tank so I'm not maligning it, the front armour was 152mm (6 inch) but the side armour was 102mm (4 inch) by the time of the Mark VII in 1943. Thing is, by that time the 7.5cm KwK 40 gun on a Pz.IV Ausf G (which had been in production since 1942) could just about penetrate more than 102mm even at 1500m with the APCR ammo, and at 1000m with the APCBC ammo.

Does that make the Churchill a bad tank? Of course not. But it just shows that even the best heavies weren't impenetrable from the sides. And mediums were never supposed to be anywhere NEAR impenetrable from all sides.

The side armour on a medium is there more to protect against glancing shots when you're still mostly facing the enemy, than to stop an AT gun shooting perpendicular to it.

I would say that on British 'Infantry Tanks' like the Churhchill some better side armor might be called for as their sides might be more exposed than other tanks as they are supposed to supporting infantry positions and could get flanked by enemy soldiers easily enough.

As for tanks being flammable, well, the biggest difference was in whether they had a diesel or gasoline engine. Gasoline tending to be more flammable, all else being equal. Thing is, then the only real meaningful difference isn't between American and German tanks, but rather between Soviet tanks and everyone else. The Soviets went all-out diesel very early, and stuck with it, so they tended to be a wee bit less likely to go *WHOOSH* than everyone else.

Early Shermans had 'dry' stowage for the ammunition, as Britian got most of the early Shermans they got the dry stoeage bins. Later models had 'wet' stowage. That is, they had double walled stowage bins with water in the sandwich. If a hot splinter penetrates the bin then water follows it and stops any potential propellant fire.

Where there was a problem was with the habit of stacking extra ammunition in 'convenient' places and not in bins and with the loader having a couple of 'ready' rounds easy to hand.

All the 'small hatch' and 57 degree front hull tanks were dry stowage.
A lot of the dry stowage tanks got extra armour plates welded to the outside of the hull over the bin locations. There are two on the right and one on the left. This was done from the factory early tanks didn't get this extra armour.
Wet Stowage was introduced with the large hatch hulls and the steeper 47 degree front plate.
Some of these tanks got dry stowage in the transition period from one model to the other they have the extra plates.

(All the Shermans had more or less the same hull with different engine decks and rear plates depending on the engine versions. There were two distinct hull versions. The 'early' with a front plate 57 degrees from the vertical and protruding 'hoods' to accommodate the small hatches and the later hulls with a 47 degree from vertical front plate and larger hatches on the larger hull top)

As for tanks being flammable, well, the biggest difference was in whether they had a diesel or gasoline engine. Gasoline tending to be more flammable, all else being equal. Thing is, then the only real meaningful difference isn't between American and German tanks, but rather between Soviet tanks and everyone else. The Soviets went all-out diesel very early, and stuck with it, so they tended to be a wee bit less likely to go *WHOOSH* than everyone else.

Actually, it wasn't. Any fuel or lubrcant is flammable, quite frankly, and Diesel's slightly higher ignition temp was a drop in the bucket compared to AT round heat release, so fuel or diesel hardly made a difference . Again the real killer was shell propellant. Once that went there was no hope to even stop the fire, and ammo had to be stored in multiple placed in the tank. Wet storage helped reduce brew ups, but even they had limits.

One of the advantages of the ammunition used in the Challenger 1 and 2 (and Chieftain before it) 120mm gun is that it uses a two part round with a separate shell and 'bagged' propellant charge similar to artillery.
That is, instead of a metal cartridge it is a soft bag that is consumed when the gun fires.
The bagged charge means that if a charge is penetrated and catches fire water from the bin jacket can directly douse any flame and cool any splinters.
Bagged charges that burn will flash rather than explode as is the case with a metal cartridge case.
A two part round is easier to handle in the turret and more can be carried as it uses space more efficiently.
In theory it should result in a lower rate of fire as two separate operations are needed to load the shell then the charge but in practice (actual war) there isn't any noticeable difference between the rates of fire of the Challenger and the Abrahms

To return to the topic (I know, I know, what's wrong with me?) I would humbly submit the two-turret version of the Polish 7TP. You know how for example the Pz.I or the Whippet had two machineguns side by side in one turret? Well, the 7TP version of that had two thin turrets side by side, with one machinegun each. Not even as in one behind the other, but side by side.

I'm normally actually a fan of the Polish army, but that tank has got to count as a Polish joke

Multiple turrets and subsidiary machine gun turrets were popular in the twenties and thirties.
In theory they give you a more flexible use of your guns. In practice they add complexity, add weight, add to the crew and the guns end up with restricted arcs of fire as the turrets block each other.
By the start of the war, apart from a few older, obsolete designs, a machine gun coaxial with the main armament and a gun in the front hull with it's own gunner became the standard layout by WW2.

To return to the topic (I know, I know, what's wrong with me?) I would humbly submit the two-turret version of the Polish 7TP. You know how for example the Pz.I or the Whippet had two machineguns side by side in one turret? Well, the 7TP version of that had two thin turrets side by side, with one machinegun each. Not even as in one behind the other, but side by side.

I'm normally actually a fan of the Polish army, but that tank has got to count as a Polish joke

To be fair, it was based on a Vickers design, so it's more of a British joke. Also, not only did the USSR use a development of the twin-turret Vickers 6-ton, but some of the early American light tanks on the chassis that was later developed into the M3 / M5 series had more or less the same arrangement. They were sometimes known as "Mae Wests" because of the appearance of the twin protuberances.

All of these also had single-turret variants, and generally the single-turret versions stayed in service much longer.

Dave

__________________Me: So what you're saying is that, if the load carrying ability of the lower structure is reduced to the point where it can no longer support the load above it, it will collapse without a jolt, right?

Speaking of Vickers-inspired designs though, the T-35 has already been mentioned in the thread, but I would like to submit the T-42 heavy tank. Just for the "WTH were the designers smoking" factor.

It was a further development of a 75 ton version of the T-35 on steroids. But when that got rejected because at the time there was no engine to move it at a reasonable speed, it got redesigned as the 100 ton T-42... for which really there was no engine that could move it at all. Which should qualify it for the "WTH were the designers smoking" award.

The eventual solution was to design it with two engines, 1000 hp each, one for each track.

The tank was really the Vickers Independent on steroids. Bigger turrets, with bigger guns, and MUCH longer than the Independent or the TOG. It really went on and on like Celine Dion's heart, behind the last turret. Only FSM knows what trenches it was supposed to cross, especially since in WW1 Russia hadn't seen the static trench warfare the west had.

@Dave Rogers
Technically, yeah, but AFAIK only the Poles bought the twin-turret version.

The T-26 model 1931 was in series production for about 2 years in the USSR, and was more or less a slightly modified Vickers 6-ton twin turret. Over 2,000 of them were built.

Dave

__________________Me: So what you're saying is that, if the load carrying ability of the lower structure is reduced to the point where it can no longer support the load above it, it will collapse without a jolt, right?

The eventual solution was to design it with two engines, 1000 hp each, one for each track.

Not quite unique, the Matilda had a pair of diesels as did the A2 version of the Sherman. (version of the Sherman favoured by the US Marines as it used the same fuel as landing craft, also the version sent to Russia as they favoured diesel power)
Most remarkable was the A4 version of the Sherman. It had the Chrysler A57 multibank engine. That was 5, 6 cylinder petrol engines arranged on to a single gearbox. Powerful but obviously more complex to service. Most went to the British who didn't find it any less reliable than other versions.